


Self-Made Men (And Women)

by nerddowell



Category: Versailles (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Attempted Sexual Assault, Body Dysphoria, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Misgendering, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Trans Liselotte, Trans Male Character, Trans Philippe, Transphobia, at least i hope not, honestly these are trigger warnings but it's not depressing i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 16:05:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11360847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/nerddowell
Summary: Based on the otpprompts Tumblr prompt 'Person A is a trans man and Person B is a trans woman, but neither of them found out until they were older, so they never got to experience the norms of their gender that children grew up with. (How to shave/when to shave. Make up. etc.) and so when they meet and find out their similarities, they teach one another what they learned as children. (Person A teaching B how to apply make up. Person B showing A how to tie a tie. AND WHY ARE THE CLOTHING MEASUREMENTS SO DIFFERENT?!) Slowing getting to know and appreciate the other in the process.'





	Self-Made Men (And Women)

**Author's Note:**

> I am definitely going to fill the Trans!Philippe tag all by myself if I have to.

_The first time ‘it’ happens, Philippe is four and watching a Disney movie with Louis in the front room, supervised by Bontemps whilst their parents are at work doing whatever rich parents do all day. It’s_ Mulan _, one of his favourites (as well as_ Hercules _), which both he and Louis know full well Bontemps is only putting on to keep them both occupied for a while whilst he looks after all the Adult stuff he has to do. Louis wants to play hide and seek, cowboys and Indians, anything but sit still and watch the movie, but Philippe is enraptured._

_He wants to be pretty like Mulan, but he wants to be like her in more than one way. He tried cutting his own hair once, just like she does in the movie, with a knife from the kitchen, but he cut his cheek instead and had to get a stitch. Bontemps was so mad he sent Philippe to his corner for ten whole minutes, and didn’t even look around when Philippe cried. He had to promise never to touch the knives in the kitchen ever again, but the hug he got eventually made things better. He tried to explain he was just trying to be like Mulan, but Bontemps wasn’t listening properly._

_‘I just wanted to be like Mulan,’ he’d sobbed, and Bontemps just smoothed his hair and rubbed his back with one broad hand._

_Today Philippe still wants to be like Mulan, so he watches extra carefully to work out how he can copy her. Louis is bored, and he keeps talking all the way through the film; Philippe is enraptured by the swish of sword through her hair and the boy who emerges, dressed in his armour. He’s so handsome, and it’s so easy; maybe he should ask Bontemps to cut his hair for him. It’s very long, down to the middle of his back, and pushed back at the moment with a hairband that says ELISABETH in puffy letters. He wants it short and straight, like Mulan’s, or even better, cut to around his ears like Louis’._

_Louis picks up the remote and turns the film off, demanding that Philippe play with him instead, and Philippe screams –_ screams _, like a banshee being electrocuted – and attacks his brother with tiny, flailing fists, screeching ‘GIVE IT BACK!’ until Bontemps hauls him away and sends him to his room for a cool-down for five minutes._

_Louis gets off scot-free, which strikes Philippe as incredibly unfair, since he’s the one that started it._

* * *

The youth group building is old, short and squat with a slate tile roof, and Philippe takes a long time just staring at the front edifice of chipped and rainbeaten brickwork, searching for the courage to step inside. He got to this point last week before ultimately chickening out, and the week before he’d intended to attend but hadn’t even managed to get to the Métro station before talking himself out of it. He scuffs his toe against the pavement, dirtying the worn toe of his Converse even more, and pulls his iPod out of his pocket to flick past Swedish House Mafia to _Seven Nation Army_ by the White Stripes. Jack White never fails to fill him with courage of a sort, and he squares his shoulders inside his jacket before climbing the steps and slipping inside.

There are voices coming from one of the rooms down the corridor, and a person of indiscriminate gender with a razor-cut shock of scarlet hair sat at the desk in the entryway who waves at him. He gives them a tight smile and hurries towards the sound of voices, keen to get out of the grey-carpeted hallway with its peeling paint. There’s a sign on the door, printed in rainbow-lettered Comic Sans – he cringes internally – and he pushes open the door to see a group of six or seven other teenagers and a guy with curly red hair who holds out his hand to Philippe with a broad grin, showing gappy teeth.

‘Hi. Are you Philippe?’

He nods silently, taking off his headphones to rest them around his neck, and turns off his iPod. Around the room are scattered several sofas and bean bags, although most seem to be taken with either a body or bags and coats. There’s a seat free on the far couch next to an awkward-looking boy with long curly hair, blond, pinned away from his face with sparkly silver barettes, and Philippe mentally facepalms. He is most likely a she, and he is most likely going to have to get over that whole ‘everyone is cis until identified otherwise’, at least in this group.

He takes a seat next to her – _her_ , he reminds himself forcefully – and offers her a small smile. She glances up at him with the biggest, roundest baby-blue eyes he’s ever seen and smiles back shyly. She’s got traintrack braces with pink rubber bands on them.

‘I’m Philippe.’

‘I’m undecided,’ she says in a soft German accent, her voice wobbling in a falsetto. He frowns at her.

‘Undecided?’

‘I haven’t picked a name yet.’

‘Oh.’ He studies her for a moment, eyes narrowing, and she squirms uncomfortably under his gaze, making him blush. ‘Sorry. I was just trying to think what kind of name you look like. Have you got a shortlist?’

‘Not really. But anything’s better than _Karl Ludwig_ ,’ she says with loathing, and he nods.

‘Ouch,’ he says with the utmost sympathy. ‘How about… Elisabeth?’ _My birth name, or close enough_ , he thinks. She looks like she could suit being an Elisabeth; it goes with her soft curls and the steel he can sense behind those baby blues.

She thinks about it for a moment before nodding. ‘Sure, I could be a Lise.’

‘Lisa?’

‘Lise,’ she corrects, her voice braver this time. ‘It’s the short version where I’m from.’

‘Where’s that? Germany somewhere, I can tell, but whereabouts?’

‘Die Pfalz,’ she says, digging an iPhone in a pink silicone penguin case out of her pocket. She opens the Safari app and Googles it quickly, pulling up a map of Germany with an area in the southwest highlighted royal purple. Philippe takes it from her after a quick glance to make sure it’s okay and zooms in on the picture.

‘So it’s near Bavaria?’

‘Near, but not quite there,’ Lise says with a small smile, ‘and don’t say that to anyone from Rheinpfalz. Bavaria is like… well, if there’s anywhere in France that everyone else hates, then that’s the equivalent to Bavaria for Germans. I moved to Hanover when I was four and I grew up there, so I don’t have the Palatine accent, thank God.’

Philippe laughs, and she grins at him. Her face is pretty when she smiles, round-cheeked and pink as though she spends a lot of time outdoors being active, as opposed to him (he’s as pale as a church candle, and sees the outdoors about as often, preferring to stay inside with his books and his peace and quiet). He can’t stop looking at her; her whole face lights up, her eyes sparkle, and the tiny freckles over her nose catch the sunlight coming through the window. She’s actually _very_ pretty, and although he’s not really attracted to her – he’s as gay as they come – he can acknowledge it in an aesthetic sort of way. She adjusts one of the clips in her hair to catch a loose curl, and he reaches out with one hand to touch it.

‘Your hair is beautiful.’ He admires it for a couple of seconds until Lise starts looking shy again. ‘It’s so shiny.’

‘I sacrifice a virgin every fortnight to keep it lustrous,’ she says, and he barks out another laugh, staring at her. She grins, and he smiles back.

The rest of the group sort of fades into the background after that, and they talk for a long time about everything and nothing. She’s a transfer student of course, and as it turns out – small world! – will be starting at his school on Monday when class restarts. They’ll even be in the same year, as seniors, and he expresses the hope to see her in at least a couple of his classes. It’d make a pleasant change to have at least one friend there, and he already knew all the knuckle-dragging Neanderthals to avoid in the hallways. It might even get Louis and his constant nagging for Philippe to socialise, to ‘put himself out there’ and ‘make connections’, off his back.

At the end of the meeting – when the guy running things has to wave at them in their corner to get their attention – when he’s packing up his bag, the book he finished on the Metro on the way over falls out of his bag and she hands it back to him. It’s something by some crappy YA author about a trans girl and how hard things are for her sister because she’s trans, but he lends it to Lise anyway because he feels like she needs all the support she can get. She throws a one-armed hug around his shoulders, which he’s not expecting, but he grins shyly at her all the same and promises to see her on Monday at school.

* * *

_When he’s five and Bontemps is taking Louis to his football classes with Philippe in his leotard and tutu in the back of the car, Philippe asks Bontemps if he has a ‘thing’. Bontemps cranes his neck to look at him in the rear-view mirror and asks what he means._

_‘A thing. Like Louis. A dangly thing.’_

_‘She means a willy,’ Louis says knowledgeably from the front seat, watching the children on the swing set in the park as they drive past, and Bontemps makes a soft choking noise in his throat before swallowing hard and nodding._

_‘Yes. I do.’_

_‘When will mine grow?’ he asks, pulling one of his ballet shoes off to wriggle his toes in their tights. He can see the pink nail polish through the thin white fabric. He drags one of his books out of the pocket behind Louis’ seat and loses himself in the story of a gull stealing the lighthouse-keeper’s lunch every day for a while until Louis, tired of Bontemps’ lack of response, answers instead._

_‘You won’t, stupid. You’re a girl.’_

_‘No I’m not,’ Philippe argues, kicking Louis’ seat. His brother turns around and reaches behind the seat to slap his knee and Philippe yelps, kicking the seat again. ‘I’m not a girl!’_

_‘Elisabeth, settle down. Louis, don’t mess with your sister.’_

_‘I’m not his sister!’ Philippe shrieks, his temper flaring. ‘Stop calling me that!’_

_‘You’re my sister. My little sister,’ Louis says in a sing-song voice, and Philippe bursts into tears, kicking the seat with both feet and lashing out with small fists._

_‘I’m not! I’m not!’_

_Bontemps pulls over in the parking lot of Louis’ football club and unbuckles himself to turn around and look at Philippe. His face is red and sticky with a mess of snot and tears, and his breath is still hitching with sobs in his chest. He doesn’t stop trying to kick Louis’ seat until Bontemps catches one foot in his hand, shaking his head silently. Philippe glares, looking mutinous, but obeys, folding his arms over his chest._

_‘What’s the matter, Lizzie?’_

_‘I’m not a girl.’_

_‘Yes you are,’ Louis tells him, frowning. ‘Isn’t she, Bontemps? Lizzie’s a girl.’_

_‘No!’_

_‘Yes!’_

_‘Louis, get your football things. Elisabeth, wait in the car for a second. I’ll be right back, I promise.’ Bontemps unbuckles Louis and takes him out of the car, helping him lace his boots on, and sends Louis racing across the field towards his friends – Rohan, Gaston, and several of the boys from his school – before heading back to the car. He opens the back seat and sits down next to Philippe, his face serious. This is Bontemps’ ‘Dad’ face; neither Louis nor Philippe is old enough to remember their real dad properly, so Bontemps is the best they’ve got._

_‘Why are you saying you’re not a girl, sweetheart?’ Bontemps asks, and Philippe makes a face._

_‘Because I’m not. I’m a boy. I just haven’t grown my thing yet.’ He looks up at Bontemps with wide eyes. ‘It’s going to happen, isn’t it? It’s going to grow?’_

_‘Maybe, someday,’ Bontemps tells him, and Philippe beams, throwing small arms around Bontemps’ neck. He hugs him tightly for a moment before letting go, all business when he says, ‘Okay, ballet now.’_

_Bontemps gets into the front seat and starts up the car, and Philippe sits back and wonders exactly when ‘someday’ will be._

* * *

He sees Lise again on the Métro on the way to the Lycée when he has Fall Out Boy blasting through his headphones to muffle the rattling of the train over the tracks. His thoughts are rattling around his head equally loudly, though; he’d been attacked by that memory last night, being five years old and on his way to his ballet class when Louis as usual opened his fat mouth and stuck his foot in it. He’d asked his brother about it over breakfast only to have Louis shrug, his mouth stuffed full of croissant.

‘I don’t remember.’

 _No, I bet you don’t_ , Philippe had thought. He shakes the memory away, however, and searches for a seat as he steps into the carriage. It’s not far to school, he doesn’t really have to sit, but it does make travel more comfortable. The seat next to Lise only has her bag on it, so he approaches where she’s sitting and taps her lightly on the shoulder, gesturing to the empty seat. ‘Mind if I sit?’

‘No! No, sit down.’ She moves her bag quickly and smiles, shuffling over a little to give him more space. He does as he’s told with a grin, popping the collar of his coat against the draught from the doors as the train starts to depart, and pulls his headphones down to around his neck again. She gestures to them.

‘Good song.’

‘ _Phoenix_? It’s on my playlist. I have a special one for whenever I’m having a lame boy day. Tons of Against Me!, Sia, Mulan, stuff like that.’ He pulls his phone out of his pocket and opens his Spotify to show her. She scrolls through interestedly for a second before pulling back and biting her lip.

‘Thank you for the name help last week.’

‘Any time,’ he says, and smiles. ‘Do I call you that at school, or…?’

‘Yeah.’ She nods. ‘I got a printed deed poll, a proper one, so I sent it in last week and hopefully I should be Elisabeth Charlotte on all of my school records.’

‘Fancy,’ he says, and she elbows him; he laughs all the way to their stop, and she has to drag him out of the train carriage still giggling. He shows her the way to the Lycée, not that she could miss it; a huge white stone building with the stereotypical private school wrought iron arch, loads of students in their school’s hideous uniform walking ahead of them. Philippe is terribly envious of Louis, who graduated school a year ago and was now at university; Philippe, and now Lise, have this last year ahead of them before they get to drop the tartan skirts and the blazers.

And so the daily torture of school begins.

He drops Lise off at her form room, promising to be back in a few minutes, and makes his way dejectedly to the girls’ toilets, bag in hand. Once he’s locked inside a cubicle, he sits down on the toilet lid and takes several long, shaky breaths in before he can even think about doing what he has to. Tears are stinging in the corners of his eyes as he strips off his blazer, jumper, shirt and vest to rummage through his bag and pull out his binder. It had taken him forever to save up enough of the allowance he got from Bontemps to afford it; as rich as his and Louis’ parents were, they’d left the majority of the money they had in trust funds their sons couldn’t access until they were 21, and the rest to Bontemps for the boys’ upbringing and education in the meantime. He pulls the binder over his head, panting and struggling as he wriggles into it, the constriction around his chest almost painful until he’s got it pulled down properly. He adjusts the position of his breasts carefully, trying to get them as flat as possible, shuddering every time his fingers run over the gentle curve of them below the binder, feeling sick.

He layers his clothes back up over them with a feeling of intense relief, hiding the hated binder from view, but he can’t escape the feeling of tightness, of pressure against his chest. He feels like he’s going to cry, and on only the first day, before he’s even had chance to encounter Gaspard and his bullshit today. The next things he has to get rid of are the sweatpants, the last vestiges of him being able to claim masculinity; instead, he has to drag the hideous uniform skirt up over his hips, aware of their gentle swell and hourglass shape on his slim body, and he allows himself a quiet moan. The disconnect is so strong it feels as though he’s being torn apart, but at least he can get away with wearing boxers under the skirt.

He exits the cubicle, tucks in his shirt in the mirror, and stands side on. He’s perfectly flat under the four layers of clothes on his top half; that’s a small relief at least, and he takes as deep a breath as his binder will allow before heading back to Lise’s form room to show her where her locker and everything is.

It turns out hers is the one below his new one, so he lets her dump her stuff first. She’s still looking concernedly at him, her eyes soft and worried, but he plasters a brave smile on and throws his things into his locker before leading her back outside, sitting underneath the elm tree. She crosses her legs neatly, and he notices they’re shaved above the knee-high black socks.

‘You actually manage to make this uniform look half-decent,’ he says with a wry grin. ‘Maybe you’re just the sort of perfect Catholic girl the school wants.’

‘I’m not a perfect girl by any stretch of the imagination,’ she says, a little miserable, and he nudges her shoulder affectionately.

‘You’re more of a girl than I ever was, or will be,’ he says, and she smiles.

‘Thanks.’

‘It’s not just a compliment, it’s a statement of fact.’ She laughs.

‘I suppose it is.’

‘Anyway, I know to call you Lise–’

‘Liselotte.’

‘Liselotte, right. Oh, I get it. Lise for Elisabeth, and Lotte for Charlotte. Nice.’ He smiles. ‘But, um, you have to call me Elisabeth. At least, if you’re referring to me around anyone else. And I have to be a ‘she’ as well.’ His voice trailed off miserably, and he stared morosely at his shoes, picking a leaf out of the buckle.

‘That’s going to be so weird,’ she says, wrinkling her nose, and his heart lifts. She’s smiling at him, resting her head on his shoulder.

‘The lesbo’s found herself a girlfriend!’ Gaspard’s rough voice comes the quad, and Philippe’s skin crawls.

* * *

_His hand is rough in Philippe’s hair and pain bites into his cheek as Gaspard shoves his face into the wall, cackling._

_‘Fucking dyke,’ he hisses, hands tearing at Philippe’s shirt, and he struggles, trying to kick at him with low-heeled shoes. Gaspard’s hand pushes under his shirt, grasps one small breast, digs his nails in until Philippe sobs and wrenches, trying to get away, and only receiving a deep graze on his face for his trouble. He tries to scream, and Gaspard’s hand appears over his mouth, muffling the scream into barely a whimper._

_‘Don’t you dare,’ he snarls into Philippe’s ear, ‘or I’ll do worse.’_

_Philippe bites down hard, making Gaspard holler, and lashes out with his feet, kicking at whoever he can reach. His heel connects with Cassel’s shin, and the other lets go with a curse._

_Philippe scrambles to his feet and runs, aware that his shirt is open to the fourth button, his cheeks tear-stained and hair mussed, and he doesn’t stop running until he gets back to the house, where Bontemps finds him in the bathroom retching up everything he’s eaten that day and crying so hard he can’t breathe._

_He was fourteen._

* * *

Philippe doesn’t punch him. He wants to. But Liselotte’s hand on his shoulder grounds him, and he just snorts out a ‘Pathetic’. Gaspard tries to engage him further, shouts another couple of insults at him, but Liselotte tells him to do something filthy in German, and he slinks away. Philippe grins at her, and Liselotte passes him the book he leant her last week back.

‘Read it already?’

‘With a supreme force of will.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘I’ve never read three hundred pages of such crap before.’

‘Right?’ he asks. ‘You can totally tell that it was written by one of those cis authors who only write trans characters because they’re ‘cool’ at the moment.’

‘Don’t even get me started,’ she says, and they discuss the book’s few merits (and many, many drawbacks) for the next ten minutes before the bell rings and Philippe scrambles to his feet to show her the way towards English with Madame Scarron, their first lesson. Philippe likes English, because Bontemps had brought he and Louis up practically bilingual from when they were very small, having employed an English tutor because they ‘were likely to need it one day’. As such, he could usually sit back and do very little in English class because he was all but fluent already. As it was a required class for every student, he couldn’t get out of it, but at least he could use the time to do any homework he was behind on, or else send notes to Liselotte as he was today.

 _Thanks for helping with the situation with Gaspard. He’s a fucking moron_.

 _I thought there were laws against inbreeding in France?_ She wrote back, and he stifled a laugh into his textbook. She grinned at him. The exercises they were doing today were all about the finer points of English grammar, and she was getting confused over phrasal verbs – ‘His alarm clock went where? Went off?’ – so he leans over to help her, explaining quietly as he runs through his memories of tutor lessons from a long time ago.

_Apparently none applying to his family._

_I assume not. Monkeys don’t have to follow human laws._

_Monkeys is a little generous._

_Pigs, then.  
_

* * *

Liselotte comes home with him after school. Bontemps seems somewhat surprised to see Philippe taking a girl upstairs to his bedroom, but says nothing about it; Philippe sits her down on his bed and plugs his iPod into his speaker dock, selecting Against Me!’s _Transgender Dysphoria Blues_ album and pressing play. Laura Jane Grace’s angry vocals echo through his bedroom as Liselotte sits up on the bed, looking around with great interest at the posters of punk bands on his walls and the multicoloured collection of Doc Martens lined up in front of his wardrobe before her eyes alight on his dressing table and all of his makeup supplies. He hasn’t used any of them particularly seriously for years, but when she turns pleading eyes to him, he smiles.

‘Are you good at that?’ She nods in the direction of his makeup.

‘Judge for yourself,’ he says, and pulls up his Tumblr with his selfie tag, scrolling through pages of angsty teenage black and white stuff before reaching his mid-teens, where he tried – briefly, and with no great success – to be a ‘real girl’. Liselotte pores over the images for a long time, admiring every last sweep of blush over his delicate cheekbones and the gentle contours, the sparkly eyelids and long lashes and red, red lips. When she looks up at him, her eyes are swimming, and he pauses, worried he’s upset her.

‘Hey, it’s–’

‘Teach me,’ she pleads, and he smiles, relieved.

What happens next is a master class in makeup. He shows her the stages to follow when applying makeup – cleanser, moisturiser, primer, foundation, contour, blush, highlight – and how to do various styles of eye makeup, everything from natural to deeply unnatural, smoky to a simple flick of cat-eye liner. She drinks it in as he shows her, first on himself then on her, always doing one side so that she can practise on the other. They laugh the first time she gives herself a raccoon eye by smudging her liner too much, or uses the wrong shade of purple on the lid so it looks like she’s been punched. But by the time night has fallen outside, she’s gotten the hang of most of it, albeit with a very shaky liquid eyeliner line above her top lashes, and she looks beautiful. Her face is moulded into more of a heart shape with the contour, her lids are a delicate, slightly shimmery gold, and her lips are painted a soft pink. She beams at him.

‘Amazing! How did you learn that?’

‘You’ll laugh,’ he tells her, abashed, and she grins, elbowing him.

‘C’mon.’

‘Mulan. I watched how they traced her eyeliner and did her lips, and I used to practise for hours on myself when I was little. I once used a whole pot of my mother’s loose white powder on my face trying to look like a geisha, and Louis said I looked like a ghost and I hit him.’

She does laugh, loud and free, and he grins back.

‘C’mon, you teach me something.’ He nudges her gently, and she thinks for a moment before brightening.

‘Do you know how to shave?’

‘In theory, yes. In practise, no.’

‘Follow me, young Padawan,’ she tells him, and leads him to the bathroom. She’s got her own disposable razor and shaving set buried deep at the bottom of her bag – ‘For five o’clock shadow emergencies!’ – and she proceeds to lather up carefully, ruining the lower half of her makeup, but Philippe doesn’t care. He’s entirely focused on watching the way she moves the razor over her skin, laughing when she nicks herself on the jaw and receiving a glower in response. The face she pulls when shaving her upper lip makes him laugh even harder, and she squirts him with shaving foam; within seconds, she’s put down the razor and they’re having a full-on shaving foam fight until the whole bathroom, including themselves, is covered in fluffy white foam and both Liselotte and Louis’ (and Bontemps’!) cans are empty. She puts hers down sheepishly, biting her lip, and both of them explode into more giggles.

Philippe puts their uniforms in the wash to clean the foam residue off, and allows Liselotte the run of his closet. She strokes her fingers over the dresses, hidden away in one side where he never even looks, and the wistfulness of her hands over the fabric is undeniable. He approaches her slowly, still in his binder and boxers as she stands there in a bra and panties under tights, covering herself shyly with her arms. He picks out a flowery tea-dress of the sort that was in fashion a couple of years ago and holds it up against her thoughtfully.

‘Try this.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Do you honestly see me wearing girls’ clothes voluntarily any time soon? Maybe when I can get away with it. I want to be a man in a dress, not a girl.’

She nods and slips the dress on obediently. It pinches a little at her shoulders, broader than his, but it buttons up okay down the back and suits her. It’s delicately feminine, much like her, and he smiles warmly.

‘You look great.’

‘Really?’

He opens the other wardrobe door so that she can use the mirror, and she stares at herself in the dress for a long time as he watches her. She is lovely, he thinks, charming and funny and kind, and he wishes for a split second that he were attracted to girls because they’d make a wonderful couple. But he’s not, so he keeps it all to himself and turns away respectfully when she takes it off.

‘Take anything you want,’ he tells her. ‘I’m serious, I don’t want any of that stuff. If it fits you, it’s yours.’

She flings her arms around him and hugs him tightly, bouncing up and down in her excitement, before pressing a kiss to his cheeks and shouting another ‘Thank you, thank you!’ right into his ear. He wriggles out of her grasp, pretending to frown, and copies Archer’s deafened ‘ma! ma! ma!’ sounds. Liselotte laughs, grabbing armfuls of sweaters and cap-sleeved tshirts and skirts out of his closet, trying them on one after another. Some don’t fit, although those are the ones that tend not to fit Philippe either these days. He was skinnier as a fourteen-year-old, the last time he wore any of this stuff. But the more of it Liselotte tries on, the more natural she looks, another girl in a shopping mall changing room asking her friend ‘Does my arse look big in this?’

‘Humongous,’ he jokes, and she throws one of his shoes at him as he collapses back on the bed laughing, looking up at the ceiling and wondering how he’d managed without her.

**Author's Note:**

> For more trans Philippe, including headcanons and more fic/graphics/etc., head right along to [his tag](http://transdorleans.tumblr.com/tagged/trans%20philippe%20tag) on my Tumblr!


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